Jakes Anecdotes
This picture is of a Montgomeryshire Yeoman during the Great War. The white metal cap badge is easily seen. Many dealers and collectors will offer you this badge in brass, with the usual explanation that it is the wartime economy issue. Some of them may possibly be, but the vast majority are Birmingham-made reproductions from the original dies, and you should'nt pay very much for them.
I think this photograph was taken during the latter part of the war. I base this on examination of the tunic, which is the economy issue with no central pleats to the breast pockets. One wonders how much cloth was saved by this: not really a huge amount, one would say. The same thing was done in Hitler's war when battledress blouses were altered to show the buttons down the front: cheap and nasty.
The soldier in the picture must therefore have been in the 2/1st or 3/1st Montgomery Yeomanry, since the 1/1st had gone overseas in early 1916. The photographer was Anderson of Welshpool. The family still live in the town and own the shop, which is quite an up-market antique shop now.
The Montgomeryshire Yeomanry was disbanded in 1920, and never re-formed. This may account for the fact that pre-war full dress such as helmets and scarlet tunics were to be found quite frequently in Montgomeryshire some thirty years ago until they were hoovered up by collectors, and the remaining bits and pieces now fetch very high prices.
We recently saw an 'other ranks' Montgomeryshire Yeomanry helmet in Shrewsbury priced in excess of £1,000, indicative of the current rediculous price of most militaria. We rejoice that the helmet obtained by us when we first moved to Wales cost us very much less than this, mainly because the owner had removed the plume, hung the helmet upside down by the chin chain, and had grown a geranium in it.
Recently, I wanted a white metal Montgomery Yeomanry cap badge to mount with a medal, and the only one I could find on a dealer's list was priced at £90, so I made other arrangements. Tunic buttons for the unit are priced at anything from £5 to £10. Such is scarcity value: getting more like stamp collecting every day.